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Occultism 
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Shakespeare 
Plays 




L. \V. ROGERS 




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THE OCCULTISM 



IN THE 



SHAKESPEARE 
PLAYS 



By L. W. ROGERS 

Author of "Hints To Young Students of Occultism," 
"Self Development and the Way to Power/' etc. 



NEW YORK, N. Y. 

THE THEOSOPHICAL BOOK COMPANY, 

1909. 



.TU- 



COPYBIGHT 1909 
BY 

L. W. ROGERS 



©CIA253618 



11 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in our philosophy ." 

Hamlet, 



/ 



1 



THE OCCULTISM IN THE 
SHAKESPEARE PLAYS. 



A consideration of the occult teaching to be 
found in the Shakespeare plays need not involve 
the question of their authorship. Perhaps most 
students of occultism who have given any time 
to the examination of the literature of the 
Shakespeare-Bacon controversy have found such 
powerful arguments pointing to Bacon as the 
author that the matter is, for them, settled. Be 
that as it may, we are not for the moment con- 
cerned with the authorship of what the world 
of letters is substantially agreed in regarding as 
the most wonderful and profound delineations of 
human nature extant. Whoever produced them 
they are our possession, for our instruction and 
entertainment. Regardless of their origin we 
can study them for their intrinsic value — espe- 
cially for the great heart-lessons they teach — 
and reflect that such gems from any other pen 
would have like worth. 

That the author of these plays was no ordin- 
ary mortal the most superficial reader knows 
and that his marvelous knowledge of nature 
extended beyond the physical world is at once 
obvious to the student of occultism who reads 
them. He " holds the mirror up to nature " in 
such fashion that it is difficult to understand 



6 The Occultism Is Obvious. 

how even the materialistically blinded can fail to 
see beyond the boundaries of the purely physical 
and grasp the fact that we are being given a 
truer picture of mother earth than material senses 
can paint. The occultism in the plays is altogether 
too extensive and too prominent to be called inci- 
dental. It stands out, bold in its challenge, in 
the most important of them, in both tragedy 
and comedy, and is a fundamental part of their 
life and purpose. There are some who may 
see a deep undercurrent of mysticism in his work, 
not to be grasped without the faculty of reading 
between the lines, but aside from that some of 
the plays teem with the most obvious occultism. 
In three of his greatest tragedies — and it is 
worthy of note that they are precisely those that 
are most popular in our materialistic age — the 
return of the dead is introduced, while in the 
plays as a whole we have nearly the entire cata- 
logue of occult phenomena. There is definite 
prophecy of the future exactly fulfilled, there 
are descriptions of clairvoyance, prevision in 
dreams, ceremonial magic, the control of the 
elements by an adept and descriptions of the 
nature spirits. In short, from the solemn trag- 
edies of Hamlet and Macbeth to the rollicking 
comedy of A Midsummer Night's Dream his 
stage is peopled impartially with the varied deni- 
zens of both worlds. In limited space one can 
do but little with a subject upon which a volume 
might be written with profit, but some of the 
striking occult features in a few of the plays 
can be dealt with, and we shall see that the great 
poet-dramatist possessed a knowledge of the 



A Materialistic Blunder. 7 

invisible side of nature as complete and accurate 
as that transcendent comprehension of human 
nature that has been the marvel of his critics. 
His occult phenomena may be examined in the 
light of the latest investigations without revealing 
any inconsistencies in them, while his fairies in 
The Midsummer Night's Dream and in The 
Tempest violate none of the principles familiar to 
the theosophist but possess precisely the charac- 
teristics, powers and limitations of the nature 
spirits described by the present day investigators. 
It is an amusing fact that our materialistic 
friends often quote the phrase, " that undiscov- 
ered country from whose bourne no traveler re- 
turns/' as some sort of evidence that the author 
of Hamlet was a materialist ! It certainly ought 
to be clear enough to anybody that, since this 
expression occurs in a soliloquy by Hamlet, it 
does not necessarily represent the belief of the 
author any more than Othello's murderous lan- 
guage proves that the author believed that wives 
unjustly suspected of wrongdoing should be 
strangled to death by jealous husbands. Why 
should we presume Hamlet to represent the 
author's beliefs any more than Richard or Iago 
or even Caliban? Hamlet is a man of indecision, 
doubt and inexperience, and the language fits 
him. At that moment he had evidently had no 
personal experience with the invisible world. 
A little later even he could not have used the 
expression above quoted, for his father did return 
from " that undiscovered country ;" and Hamlet 
not only identified him but acted upon the infor- 
mation given him by his father. 



8 Communication from the Dead. 

Those who would find for the introduction of 
such phenomena as materialization in these 
plays some explanation that is consistent with the 
idea that " only children and old women believe 
in ghosts " will assuredly have trouble enough in 
any attempt to erase the occultism from Hamlet 
and have anything left. It is not trivial or inci- 
dental. It holds the very center of the stage. 
There is no loophole of " hallucination/' The 
ghost is seen and identified by others before Ham- 
let meets it. In this matter the author makes 
" assurance doubly sure "by having for one of 
the witnesses a skeptic who is convinced by his 
own eyes. The communication between Hamlet 
and the ghost is by no means trivial or casual. 
The whole future of the tragedy turns upon this 
pivotal point. Hamlet shapes his program by 
the information thus received. Through this 
materialization he comes into possession of the 
proof that his father was murdered and learns 
by whom and in what treacherous and cowardly 
manner it was accomplished. Hamlet applies 
physical tests to this psychical information and, 
thus getting full confirmation, he carries out his 
plan of revenge. 

Now, why should the great dramatist introduce 
the ghost unless it is his desire to give us a 
glimpse of the borderland — to present all the 
actors vitally concerned in the drama, whether 
visible to physical sight or not, and to portray 
their passions and emotions as they are, with their 
intimate connection with, and possible influence 
upon, the visible world? It was certainly not 
necessary to invent a ghost in order to acquaint 



Purpose of the Ghost. 9 

Hamlet at this particular moment with the meth- 
ods by which his father was murdered. It could 
easily have been done by some secreted servant 
who observed the uncle's act — after the method 
of the more materialistic dramatists who, with 
more regard to startling effects than to exact 
representations of nature, are never at a loss for 
means to lay bare a secret, and, if need be, to 
make uncertain threads meet, can create a few 
spies out of hand while you wait ! If the purpose 
of this master dramatist was not to give us a 
picture of human life that reaches beyond the 
visible, to describe the passions and emotions as 
surviving the loss of the physical body, then the 
bringing forward of the ghost violates one of the 
first principles of dramatic art: the introduction 
of the superfluous — of an incidental thing that 
is not required for the comprehension of what 
is to follow. Unless the purpose is akin to that 
above indicated the appearance of the ghost is 
a clumsy, absurd blunder; and so free are the 
Shakespeare plays from any artistic flaws that 
when anything is found in them that does not 
play a necessary part in the whole — does not 
contribute a ray of light toward the complete 
illumination of the subject under consideration — 
the critics conclude it is one of the many interpo- 
lations that have crept in since the plays left 
the author's hands. /So the only logical infer- 
ence to be drawn is that all the varied occultism 
to be found in the plays is there for a purpose — 
the very sane purpose of giving us a full and 
faithful picture of things as they really are and 
not as those who have but partial sight imagine 



io Accurately Forecasting Events. 

them to be. 

After Hamlet, Macbeth is aparently the most 
popular of the tragedies and it presents a most 
attractive array of occult phenomena. As in the 
former tragedy there is nothing incidental about 
this occultism. It runs consistently throughout 
the play. The curtain rises to it and it holds 
a most conspicuous position to the very end, for 
it is only in the last scene of the final act that 
the exact fulfillment of the witches' prophecy is 
made clear. These witches and their prophecy 
play a most vital part in the drama. It is they 
who arouse Macbeth's ambition, setting him to 
thinking of the possibility of gaining the crown 
and appealing to the worst that is in him. All 
that follows, until the very end, is but the 
working out in the visible world of events thus 
forecast. 

It will be remembered that it is in the first 
scene of the first act that Macbeth and Banquo 
are returning victorious from the battlefield when 
the witches are encountered and that they hail 
Macbeth as thane of Cawdor, an honor the king 
is about to confer upon him and of which he is 
entirely ignorant. They couple this information 
with the prophecy that he is to be king of Scot- 
land. Before he leaves the spot he learns that 
the first part of the prophecy has been swiftly 
fulfilled, and he naturally has faith in the rest 
of it; and, his mind full of the possibility of 
attaining the crown, he promptly begins plotting 
to that end. Thus is the basis for the whole action 
of the play laid. 

The second visit of Macbeth to the weird 



The Prophecy Is Fulfilled. n 

sisters results in prophecies accompanied with 
symbolical apparitions, by means of which the 
culminating tragedy is exactly set forth. An 
armored head appears and these words are 
uttered : " Macbeth, Macbeth, Macbeth, beware 
Macduff !" and in the final scene, having slain 
his foe, Macduff appears upon the stage with 
Macbeth's head upon a pole. The second and 
third apparition quickly follow, each exactly fore- 
shadowing what is actually to occur. But they 
are misinterpreted by Macbeth, and instead of 
serving as a warning only give him greater con- 
fidence and confirm him in his villany. The last 
one seems to him a certain prophecy of long 
life. It is the apparition of a crowned child 
with a tree in its hand, and Macbeth hears the 
words : 

" Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until 
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill 
Shall come against him." 

To this he replies : 

" That will never be : 
Who can impress the forest; bid the tree 
Unfix his earth-bound root?" 

His confidence in his future is now complete. 
He believes a long reign is ahead for him. This 
confidence is as great as had been his ambition 
to become king. Had not the weird sisters 
told him of his first promotion before it occurred? 
Had they not then truly prophesied that he would 
be king? Now he was being given, apparently, 
such unmistakable pledges of future security that 



12 True to Occult Principles. 

he felt certain he would finally die a natural death 
— would " live the lease of nature." And so, 
lured on by his own misinterpretation of what he 
had seen and heard, he went straight forward 
to his doom, which, to the smallest particular, ful- 
filled the prophecy. When the son of the mur- 
dered king, at the head of the invading army, 
had reached Birnam wood in the march upon 
the castle each soldier was order to cut a bough 
and hold it before him in order to screen the 
strength of the attacking party as it advanced. 
Thus " Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane 
hill " literally " came against him." To the very 
letter each separate prediction is fulfilled. 

It is inconceivable that a great dramatist would 
construct a play, the entire first part of which is 
devoted to prophecies regarding the chief per- 
sonage in the drama and the remainder of which 
is given over to the minutest fulfillment of those 
prophecies, unless he had a definite purpose to 
be accomplished by it. It is clearly impossible 
to call the occultism in Macbeth incidental. It 
is the foundation and the culmination. Some 
form of occultism is continually impressing itself 
upon the spectator, and it is all as true to occult 
principles as the characters are true to human 
life. Macbeth is naturally much overwrought 
just preceding, and after, the murder of the king. 
He represents that unique condition of nerve ten- 
sion common to temporary clairvoyance. In this 
state of mind he saw the bloody dagger in the 
air before him, so real that he tries to grasp it. 
After he has caused the death of Banquo he 
sees his victim's wraith. Banquo was on his way 



Why Banquo' s Ghost Appeared. 13 

to the feast in Macbeth's castle when he was 
murdered by Macbeth's henchmen. He was 
hurrying to the castle, with his mind intent upon 
reaching it, when death overtook him. His wraith 
appears at the feast, but only Macbeth, with his 
overwrought nerves, sees it, and his language is 
fittingly descriptive of wraiths when he says, 
" Thou hast no speculation in those eyes." 

It is most interesting to observe how true to 
nature and to the theosophical teaching this 
description of the wraith of Banquo is. Not only 
the possibility of Macbeth seeing the wraith but 
the probability of its appearing just where and 
when it did are faithful to the occult facts. The 
thoughts of the dying very naturally have their 
after-death influence and aside from occult liter- 
ature there are frequent reports of the experi- 
ences of friends and relatives who have seen the 
apparitions of/the dead before news of the death 
reached them( But it is not merely to friends that 
an apparition fftay appear. The determining fac- 
tor seems to be the strong desire of the dying 
to be with certain people, or at a certain place, 
whatever the reason might be that caused the 
desire. Banquo was late, was riding hard, and 
had the whole of his mental energies upon the 
problem of arriving at the banquet on time, 
when he suddenly met death.) 

In order that the phenomena of wraiths may 
be understood and the naturalness of the descrip- 
tion of the appearance of the wraith of Banquo 
at the banquet may be fully appreciated it is 
necessary to understand something of the theo- 
sophical conception of the constitution of a human 



14 Wraiths of the Dead. 

being. The physical body in which we have our 
waking consciousness and the astral body in 
which we consciously exist after bodily death are 
connected by the " etheric double/' constituting 
an exact duplicate, in etheric matter, of the phy- 
sical body and occupying the same space, as air 
and ether do — the interpenetration of two 
grades of physical matter. This etheric double, 
which is an exact duplicate of the physical body, 
is nevertheless not a body, for the ego cannot 
use it as a vehicle of consciousness as both the 
physical body and the astral body can be used. 
It is merely the connecting link between them and 
its function is to convey the life forces to the 
physical mechanism. Being of physical, though 
invisible, matter it perishes with the physical 
body but immediately after bodily death, it often 
plays the role of ghost. 

"At what is called death, the etheric double is 
drawn away from its dense counterpart by the 
escaping consciousness ; the magnetic tie existing 
between them during earth life is snapped 
^asunder, and for some hours the consciousness 
remains enveloped in this etheric garb. In this it 
sometimes appears to those with whom it is 
closely bound up, as a cloudy figure, very dully 
consciousness and speechless — the wraith:" 

— The Ancient Wisdom, p. 56. 

" The ego [at the time of bodily death] quickly 
shakes off the etheric double, which, as we have 
seen, cannot pass on to the astral plane, and leaves 
it to disintegrate with its life-long partner. It 
will sometimes appear immediately after death to 
friends at no great distance from the corpse, but 



Macbeth Was No Covuard. 15 

naturally shows very little consciousness, and 
will not speak or do anything beyond ' manifest- 
ing ' itself. It is comparatively easily seen, being 
physical, and a slight tension of the nervous sys- 
tem will render vision sufficiently acute to discern 
it." — Man and His Bodies, p. 31. 

It was this nerve tension that enabled Macbeth 
to see the wraith of Banquo which, to the others, 
was invisible. There was no "hallucination" about 
it. He did not look upon a picture painted by 
that treacherous artist, Fear. Macbeth was not 
a timid man afraid of shadows, but a veteran war- 
rior of dauntless courage ; and to this well-known 
quality of her husband's character Lady Macbeth 
promptly appealed : 

"Are you a man ?" 
"Ay, and a bold one, that dare look on that 
Which might appall the devil." 

Encouraging this attitude of mind Lady Mac- 
beth replies : 

"O proper stuff! 
This is the very painting of your fear; 
This is the air-drawn dagger which, you said, 
Led you to Duncan. O, these flaws and starts, 
Imposters to true fear, would well become 
A woman's story at a winter's fire, 
Authoriz'd by her grandam. Shame itself ! 
Why do you make such faces ? When all's done, 
You look but on a stool." 

But Macbeth saw, and knew he saw, the ghost 
of his latest victim ; and while Lady Macbeth saw 
nothing and marvelled to observe how deeply her 
husband was moved he was astounded to see that 






16 Macbeth Temporarily Clairvoyant. 

she was unmoved, so real was the murdered Ban- 
quo before him. To her protest that he was 
throwing the whole assemblage into disorder 
he replies : 

" Can such things be, 
And overcome us like a summer's cloud, 
Without our special wonder? You make me 

strange 
Even to the disposition that I owe, 
When now I think you can behold such sights, 
And keep the natural ruby of your cheeks, 
When mine are blanch'd with fear." 

To Macbeth, whose temporary abnormal con- 
dition enabled him to see the etheric matter com- 
posing the duplicate of the dead man's physical 
body, there was no more question of Banquo's 
presence than there was of the existence of the 
other people in the room. Of course he would 
not be conscious of the fact that he could see 
what the others could not see. It did not even 
occur to him that Lady Macbeth did not see the 
wraith. It was as visible to him as the furniture 
and he expressed his astonishment that she " can 
behold such sights " and give no outward sign 
of agitation. 

The occult side of sleep and dreams is an- 
other subject on which a flood of light is thrown 
in this great tragedy. What, from the theosoph- 
ical viewpoint, is the thing we call sleep? If 
is the temporary withdrawal of the ego from the 
physical body, which then rests and recuperates. 
Its depleted energy is restored for the morrow's 
activities. Of course consciousness does not 
slumber. It must necessarily be functioning 



The Dream Terror of Murderers. 17 

somewhere and while the physical body lies inert 
the consciousness is using the astral body as its 
vehicle. It is not without excellent reason that 
sleep is so often used as an analogy for death. 
Sleep is, in very truth, a sort of temporary death, 
the difference being that the ego is absent from 
the physical body for a short time instead of 
permanently. 

Every student of occultism is familiar with 
the fact that when one falls asleep the conscious- 
ness leaves the physical body and that the astral 
body is then its habitation. Hence, the living 
and the so-called dead may then be together. 
The terror with which murderers come back into 
the waking consciousness from slumber and their 
disposition to automatically go through rehears- 
als of the murder during sleep are facts that 
are as commonly known as they are imperfectly 
understood. In Macbeth we are given a most 
vivid presentation of the fact that sleep thus 
occultly plunges the murderer back into the 
tragedy he foolishly believes to be a closed chap- 
ter. Neither Macbeth nor Lady Macbeth can 
sleep, and he speaks of " the affliction of these 
terrible dreams that shake us nightly." Bold 
and resolute as she is, Lady Macbeth refuses 
to sleep without a light burning. In the sleep- 
walking scene she re-enacts her part in the mur- 
der of the king, trying to wash the blood from 
her hands, as she walks. " Out, damned spot !" 
she exclaims, and again, " What, will these hands 
ne'er be clean ?" and we learn from the attend- 
ant's conversation with the doctor that this is 
but a repetition of similar scenes. The miser- 



1 8 Rithard Sees His Victims' Ghosts. 

able woman finally dies under the strain. 

This terror that comes upon the murderer, 
when in sleep he loses the protection afforded 
him by the gross physical matter that shuts out 
the astral world from his waking consciousness, 
is presented to us again in Richard III. Richard 
has fallen asleep in his tent, that last night of 
his life, when he meets, as in the flesh, the long 
list of his victims, each of whom makes it clear 
that disaster and death are just ahead. So real 
is all this to Richard that when he awakes he is 
not at first able to distinguish the astral from 
the physical consciousness. The late Richard 
Mansfield used to bring this out admirably when 
playing the role of the murderous king. " Who's 
there?" he demands, as Ratcliff approaches the 
tent after a short absence, during which the 
king's terrorizing experience occurs. " My lord, 
'tis I," says Ratcliff, but Richard doubts his 
senses. Slowly and fearfully he approaches Rat- 
cliff, stretching out his arm to the utmost, ad- 
vancing by inches ; making sure by the sense of 
touch that this is really a being of flesh. Finally 
assured of this he falls limply upon his lieuten- 
ant's shoulder and exclaims : 

" O Ratcliff, I fear, I fear ! 
Methought the souls of all that I had murder'd 
Carne to my tent; and everyone did threat 
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard." 

The officer tries to reassure him, and laugh 
the matter away with a remark on the folly of 
being afraid of shadows. But they were very 
real to Richard, and he replies : 

" By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night 



Had Premonition of Caesar's Death. 19 

Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard 
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers." 

In Julius Caesar we have a prophetic warning, 
premonition of death and the return of the dead. 
In the first act a soothsayer warns Caesar, as he is 
on his way to the course, to " beware the ides of 
March." Caesar calls him " a dreamer " and 
thinks no more of the matter until when, on 
that fatal day as he is approaching the capital, 
he sees the soothsayer in the throng and calls out 
to him, evidently as proof of the emptiness of 
the warning, " the ides of March are come ;" to 
which the seer replies, "Ay, Caesar, but not 
gone!" Within the hour Caesar was dead. 

Calphurnia had a premonition of Caesar's 
death. The night preceding the assassination she 
saw a statue of the warrior 

" Which, like a fountain with an hundred sprouts, 
Did run pure blood; and many lusty Romans 
Came smiling, and did bathe their hands in it." 

— a very accurate symbolical description of what 
occurred the following day when the conspirators 
surrounded Caesar in the senate, stabbed him 
from every side and then, delighted with the 
complete success of the conspiracy, crowded 
about to act on the advice of Brutus to " bathe 
our hands in Caesar's blood " and walk forth to 
proclaim to the people that his death was the 
birth of peace and freedom. It cannot be argued 
that the dream was merely some fantastic fig- 
ment of the brain that happened to occur on that 
particular night, because it was distinctly con- 



20 Sane and Reasonable Ghosts. 

nected with the coming tragedy and Caesar 
remarks in the early morning: 

" Nor heaven nor earth have been at peace to-night : 
Thrice hath Calphurnia in her sleep cried out, 
' Help, ho ! they murder Caesar !' " 

The ghosts of the Shakespeare plays are 
rational and natural ghosts. There is always a 
reason for their appearance, just as there is a 
reason back of every act of a sane person. The 
dead king who materializes in Hamlet naturally 
had an intense desire to acquaint his son with the 
truth about the murder and the fact of his uncle's 
diabolical treachery. In Richard III the mur- 
dered victims, thrust suddenly from their physi- 
cal bodies by the ever-ready blade of the con- 
scienceless Gloster, naturally enough hated him 
as they would had they remained alive in prison 
in physical life, while he swaggered about with 
the crown. It is not strange that they should be 
pleased with his coming downfall and the warn- 
ing they gave him, which is a warning to dis- 
hearten instead of to save, is most natural. It 
contains a note of triumph. They see his end 
and do all they can to make it doubly sure. 

In Julius Caesar the ghost of Caesar appears to 
Brutus, and most naturally so. Between the two 
there had been so strong a tie that when Caesar 
discovers Brutus among his assassins he exclaims 
in astonishment, " Thou too, Brutus ? — then fall, 
Caesar!" Whether, when he materialized in 
Brutus' tent, it was in the role of friend to warn 
him of approaching death, and thus lessen the 
shock by reflection upon the inevitable, or in 



Caesars Ghost Visits Brutus. 21 

the role of enemy and persecutor, it is, in either 
case, a perfectly natural thing. If his love 
for Brutus had suddenly changed to hatred when 
he saw him as one of his slayers, and he was 
unforgiving, Brutus would naturally be the object 
of Caesar's revenge, and in that case it might 
easily be that he came to taunt and dishearten 
him. But if he felt more sorrow than anger and 
his affection for this " noblest Roman of them 
all," as even his enemies called Brutus, remained 
strong despite his error of joining the conspir- 
ators, then it is most natural that Caesar should be 
drawn to him with a friendly word on what was 
coming. The ghost does not appear in a dream 
but as a materialization while Brutus sits read- 
ing in his tent; and whether as friend or foe 
there is no doubt left in the mind of Brutus about 
the information thus given him. He has no heart 
in the last battle. His thoughts are of his ap-y 
proaching end and he says to Volumnius, 

" The ghost of Caesar hath appeared to me 
Two several times by night, — at Sardis once 
And this last night, here in Philippi fields : 
I know my hour is come." 

When we turn from tragedy to comedy we 
find a different, but no less interesting, phase 
of occultism. Where shall we find a more fascin- 
ating and beautiful picture of the nature spirits 
than in A Midsummer Night's Dream? In this 
comedy the curtain that shuts a large part of 
nature from the vision of most of us is lifted a 
little and we get a glimpse of the life that cannot 
be observed with the physical senses. The fairies 



22 We Are Shown the Invisible World. 

dance and frolic for us and, while the poet avails 
himself of the license to which the muse is rightly 
entitled, he gives us a faithful portrayal of the 
characteristics of these witching denizens of the 
world invisible. In their essentials there is no 
difference between the fairies of the Shakespeare 
plays and the nature spirits of the Leadbeater 
books. Puck makes himself visible or invisible 
at will and quickly assumes various forms to 
suit the purpose of the moment; and he greatly 
enjoys the task Oberon assigns him of misleading 
and glamoring mortals — a characteristic familiar 
to students of the astral and etheric regions. 

" I'll follow you, I'll lead you 'bout around, 
Through bog, through bush, through brake, through 

briar : 
Sometimes a horse I'll be, sometimes a hound, 
A hog, a headless bear, sometimes a fire; 
And neigh, and bark, and grunt, and roar, and burn, 
Like horse, hound, hog, bear, fire, at every turn." 

The dramatist lets us see that these non-human 
but intelligent beings belong to another order of 
creation and do not understand life as we do. A 
thing of much value to us has no value in their 
eyes. They would not exchange a knowledge 
of the favorite spots in which 

"To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind," 

for all the wealth and joys of mortals; and look- 
ing on at the incomprehensible actions of the 
physical plane people Puck exclaims, 

"Lord, what fools these mortals be!" 



May Be Visible or Invisible. 2$ 

C. W. Leadbeater, in his work The Astral 
Plane, describes these nature spirits — as the 
whole of this great lower strata of the deva evolu- 
tion is known to theosophy — as " tricky and mis- 
chievous but rarely malicious. " These charac- 
teristics come out prominently in such characters 
as Puck and Ariel. Puck describes himself as 
" that merry wandered of the night " who devotes 
himself with great gusto to good-natured mis- 
chief, for his own and others' entertainment, and 
it was when he was playing his favorite tricks 
on his victims that they would " swear a merrier 
hour was never wasted." Ariel, in The Tempest, 
takes similar delight in making a victim of Cali- 
ban. He finds Caliban, on account of his ignor- 
ance and stupidity, easily frightened and Ariel 
plays all manner of pranks with him, leading him 
astray into bogs, suddenly assuming the form of 
a porcupine, of which Caliban had a particular 
dread, and again appearing in his pathway as a 
chattering ape, to the terror of Caliban and the 
amusement of Ariel. How true to nature this 
character is drawn may be seen from the descrip- 
tion of the author and investigator above quoted. 
Referring to the characteristics of this class of 
astral entities he says : 

" In most cases when they come in contact 
with man they either show indifference or dislike, 
or else take an impish delight in deceiving him 
and playing childish tricks upon him. * * * 
They are greatly assisted in their tricks by the 
wonderful power which they possess of casting 
a glamour over those who yield themselves to 
their influence, so that such victims for the time 



24 The Fairies or Nature Spirits. 

see and hear only what these fairies impress 
upon them, exactly as the mesmerized subject 
sees, hears, feels and believes whatever the mag- 
netizer wishes/' — The Astral Plane, p. 79. 

Those who credit the existence of fairies at all, 
are likely to think of them as a little group of 
beings exhibiting no great diversity of form or 
powers. The student of occultism knows what a 
misconception this is, and here again the great 
dramatist sets us right both in The Tempest and 
in A Midsummer Night's Dream. The dislike 
of these nature spirits for the cities and their 
love of the secluded places, commented upon by 
Mr. Leadbeater, also comes out clearly in these 
two plays, as does the speed with which they 
move and the distance from which things may 
be brought in an incredibly short time. When 
Oberon wants a certain herb and enjoins haste 
Puck boasts of his ability to " put a girdle round 
about the earth in forty minutes/' — not in the 
least an exaggeration of the possibilities of astral 
plane locomotion. 

One thing that seems to have puzzled the critics 
of these matchless plays is their consistency. Not 
crediting the invisible world as a fact in nature 
they have marvelled that the dramatist unites the 
visible and the invisible in so complete and con- 
sistent a whole. One puzzled writer exclaims — 
"" by making what is absolute unnatural thor- 
oughly natural and consistent he has accom- 
plished the impossible !" 

It is an extremely significant fact that the 
Shakespeare plays which the critics are generally 
agreed upon as being the greatest of them all are 



Prospero, the White Magician. 25, 

those which contain the most occultism. No 
other play ever written has received such uni- 
versal praise as The Tempest. It was the last 
dramatic work of the poet's life and in it is seen, 
according to general opinion, the acme of his 
matchless art. Now The Tempest, of all the 
plays, is the most occult. As would be expected 
there is much difference of opinion about its 
purpose, but none about its merit. To its analysis 
learned minds have given the most painstaking 
labor and it is the theme of many a weighty 
volume. To the student of occultism this play 
and A Midsummer Night's Dream are com- 
panions and constitute a class in the Shakes- 
peare plays. The opinions about them, and par- 
ticularly about The Tempest, are almost as 
numerous as the critics; but perhaps nobody is 
better qualified to interpret such literature than 
Hugo. Of these two plays he says : A Mid- 
summer Nighfs Dream depicts the action of the 
invisible world on man ; The Tempest symbolizes 
the action of man on the invisible world/' 

Prospero is the central figure in The Tempest 
and in him we have a picture of the adept, abso- 
lutely controlling the lower orders of life in the 
invisible world and through that power controll- 
ing in perfect mastery the elements. He is the 
white magician. He has omnipotent power but 
uses it only for righteous ends and always with 
mercy. He sometimes temporarily assumes an 
apparent harshness but is always in fact the per- 
sonification of gentleness and no offense is too 
serious for him to forgive and forget. He returns 
good for evil, and hardship is brought upon the 



26 Prospero Has Clairvoyant Sight. 

wrong-doers only for the purpose of bringing the 
arrogant and conscienceless to their senses. He 
has clairvoyant vision and moves about in his 
astral body; for he is not merely aware of what 
is occurring at a distance but is represented as 
being invisibly present when Ariel arraigns the 
three evil-doers for their misdeeds. He knows 
of the danger that threatens the king and Gon- 
zalo and sends Ariel to prevent the would-be 
assassins from murdering them by awakening 
Gonzalo at the right instant. He has the power 
to instantly hypnotize Ferdinand and disarm him 
with a stick when he draws his sword. To the 
invisibles that serve him Prospero issues positive 
commands and exacts unquestioning- obedience. 
Fleming says of this character that Prospero is 
the personification of wisdom, of power that can 
execute justice, rewarding right and circumvent- 
ing wrong. 

It was through control of the nature spirits 
that Prospero produced the storm at sea that 
drove the ship containing his treacherous brother 
and his allies to the island shore; and it was 
through his command of the same entities that his 
further plans were successfully executed. Ariel, 
the chief of the invisible hosts that serve Pros- 
pero, not any too willingly, is visible or invisible 
at pleasure and assumes, instantaneously, various 
forms at will. He possesses the power of glamour 
in remarkable degree and the shipwrecked men 
are fully persuaded that the vessel is lost. Ariel 
reports to Prospero that " the ship, though invis- 
ible to them, is safe in the harbor. " He separates 
the stranded men and each group or individual 



Actors From the Invisible World. 27 

believes all others have perished. The king 
believes his son is dead while the prince is certain 
his father has perished; and through the state 
of mind thus brought about the problem in hand 
is worked out successfully. In working them up 
into the condition that finally made them tractable 
and penitent, Ariel, in the form of a harpy, 
frightened the king, Sebastian and Antonio — 
" three men of sin " — nearly out of their wits. 
Again, at the head of a band of the denizens 
of the world invisible, who take visible form, he 
drives the marauders and would-be murderers 
from Prospero's home. The final task assigned 
him by Prospero is to carry out the magician's 
promise to the king that on the return voyage he 
shall have " calm seas," and " auspicious gales." 
With the execution of this task Ariel gained his 
longed-for freedom from serving the magician 
whom he called " great master " and won the 
life he much preferred : 

" Merrily, merrily shall I live now 
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough." 

In The Tempest there are more actors from 
the invisible world than from the visible and all 
are under the control and direction of Prospero, 
whose compassion is as great as his power. He 
addresses the would-be assassins as " my friends " 
and says " let us not remember our troubles past." 

If the critics could accept the very apparent 
fact that the author of these wonderful plays 
was a great occultist their difficulties and be- 
wilderment would disappear. For one thing they 
would no longer marvel: at his limitless knowledge 



28 The Real Explanation. 

on all the subjects he touches. Hazlitt contents 
himself with calling it genius and says that " there 
can be little doubt that Shakespeare was the most 
universal genius that ever lived/' and again he 
remarks that the great dramatist had " the same 
insight into the world of imagination that he had 
into the world of reality." 

It is amusing to see how different people are 
struck with the poet's exact technjeal knowledge 
on subjects with which they happeti to be familiar 
and how they try to account for it, ignoring the 
fact that he is quite as much at home with all 
other subjects. Lord Mulgrave, who was a dis- 
tinguished naval officer, says that the first scene in 
The Tempest " is a very striking instance of 
Shakespeare's knowledge in a professional 
science, the most difficult to attain without the 
help of experience. He must have acquired it 
by conversation with some of the most skillful 
seamen of that time." If the poet-dramatist 
acquired his marvelous fund of information 
about the visible world, let alone the invisible, 
by consulting experts on each subject it would 
puzzle the critics more to figure out how he 
had time for anything else than to satisfactorily 
account for his genius. But if we accept the 
most probable explanation — that he was an 
occulist to whom cause and effect in the two 
worlds lay open — the solution of all the puzzles 
in his literary work becomes simple. 

Those who cannot see that the occultism which 
permeates such of the Shakespeare plays as it 
naturally belongs to is there because it is as 
legitimate a part of them as trees and grass are 



An Illogical Explanation. 29 

part of a landscape, have, so far as I know, 
offered no other explanation than that " Shakes- 
peare was making a concession to the super- 
stition of his times. " But such an explanation 
is wholly inadequate for a number of reasons. 
In the first place if it were merely a concession 
to the ignorant, there would be no reason for it 
being the notable thing it is in some of the plays. 
It would be incidental, not vital. We would 
expect it to be in the form of allusions here and 
there, as a politician throws out to his audience 
complimentary and pleasing remarks that have 
no bearing on his arguments and no part in his 
purpose. But why should there be a " conces- 
sion " at all ? Why was it necessary ? Why was 
it more necessary in the Shakespeare plays than 
in any others of that age? Why didn't Jonson 
and other successful dramatists of the same age 
have to make the same concession ? As a matter 
of fact precisely the opposite course then, as 
now, appealed pleasingly to the people. In The 
Alchemist Jonson makes a savage attack upon 
astrology. He represents its practitioners as 
barefaced frauds of the most contemptible type 
and all their patrons as credulous fools. Quite 
consistently, too, with the temper of the play, 
he mercilessly ridicules the Puritans, painting 
them as unprincipled graspers among whom you 
search in vain for a redeeming virtue; and that 
must have pleased his audience mightily. 

The Shakespeare plays were not written to 
cater to the passions of the times. With their 
inherent strength and beauty they can win their 
way against the prejudices of any age. More- 



30 Not Superstition But Science. 

over, if it had been necessary for a play to have 
some " superstition " in it, in order to succeed, 
why was it necessary in some of these plays and 
not in others? If it was necessary for the suc- 
cess of A Midsummer Night's Dream why was it 
not also necessary for As You Like It? If it 
was essential to the success of Hamlet and Mac- 
beth why not also for Othello? The simple truth 
is that the occultism appears only where it natur- 
ally belongs and for the purpose of teaching the 

(lesson that is being presented. 

v - But there are other reasons for rejecting the 
theory that the great dramatist was making a 
concession to the ignorance of his times. The 
plays do not belong exclusively to that age and 
bear most convincing internal evidence that they 
were not written for that time any more than 
for this time or for the future generations. Cer- 
tainly nobody better than the author himself 
understood that. It was more than two centuries 
before this greatest literary achievement of the 
modern world came to be really appreciated in 
fair degree. It will undoubtedly be more fully 
appreciated in future times than in our own, 
for what is its " superstition " to this generation 
will be its science to the next. It belongs to all 
times because it deals with the fundamental 
things in nature and will be studied with profit 
as long as men seek to analyze human motives 
and study the evolution of the race. 

Perhaps the most cogent answer of all to 
the flimsy explanation that the great poet-dramat- 
ist was making " a concession to the superstition 
of his times " is that such a course would have 



He Was Above Base Motives. 31 

been a prostitution of his genius inconsistent 
with the character of his work. His greatness 
as a teacher is beyond all question; and nothing 
could be more reprehensible than for one who 
is far beyond others in intelligence to fasten upon 
the people wrong beliefs. To lend his pen to any 
such base purpose would be evidence of a moral 
weakness and cowardice that could not have 
belonged to the character of the man who pro- 
duced these plays, for their moral strength and 
grandeur is more striking than even their intel- 
lectual power. No man capable of that ignoble 
course could possibly have created such char- 
acters as Prospero and Cordelia, or have given 
us the lofty ideals we find in such plays as The 
Tempest and in Romeo and Juliet. The truth is 
that instead of degrading his work to fit the popu- 
lar conception of his times he did precisely the 
opposite; and in an age when lust, cruelty and 
revenge were exceedingly popular he exalted pur- 
ity, pity and forgiveness. 



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